


spoondrift

by sushi_san



Series: white horse [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alcohol Withdrawal, Anger Management, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety, Asexual Relationship, Booker | Sebastien le Livre Needs Therapy, Dark, Depression, F/F, F/M, Guilt, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Mental Health Issues, Minor Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Multi, Panic Attacks, Past Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko - Freeform, Platonic Cuddling, Platonic Relationships, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Quynh | Noriko Needs Therapy, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-09-08
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:40:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25869805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sushi_san/pseuds/sushi_san
Summary: One of them deserved it. One of them didn’t. They sow their pain and loneliness until it bears fruit. Somewhere along the way, they become each other’s salvation.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Quynh | Noriko
Series: white horse [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1877221
Comments: 36
Kudos: 220





	1. soap

**Author's Note:**

> You don’t have to read Ask before this.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw: ptsd, panic attacks

The first time goes about as well as one would expect.

Booker hadn't been planning on bringing it up but Quynh is surprisingly tactile and while he isn't a pillar of personal hygiene, if they're going to be sharing a bed, something needs to be done. He imagines this is what it would be like if he'd raised his sons in the 21st century. Teaching Quynh is sort of like that—although the first time he mentions it he gets a fork in his shoulder for his troubles.

She isn't quiet and calculating. Not unnervingly stoic like he'd anticipated. No, she's sly and cunning, unfiltered and brazen. The day she first speaks to him, he offers to sleep on the couch. That night she creeps from his bed and curls up against him. For the first night in centuries, they both find peace when they dream.

However, now, crowded by the tub, she's strangely nonverbal. She eyes the plumbing like it will attack her, seems distant when he explains how to change the temperature.

“Do you—uh, do you want me to turn it on for you?” he asks awkwardly when he stands and she makes no effort to move. She makes a questioning humming sound, still not looking at him. Her eyes are narrowed and wary and he has to remind himself that this woman is closer to Andy’s age than his own, no matter how young she looks.

He leans in to test the temperature and it snaps her out of her daze. “Unless you're going to join me,” she starts. He doesn't know her well enough yet to see past the humorous tilt of her voice, the playful tease in her eyes.

“Is that an invitation?” She slaps the back of her hand on his shoulder and kicks his ass lightly as he retreats, the both of them laughing.

Her mannerisms remind him of the Guard and it hurts more than he ever thought it could. There were times when he wished for nothing more than an escape from Andy’s infectious pessimism, from the toxic envy that came from living with two men whose gift was his curse. And yet, when finally granted, their absence carves a hole in him so wide there's barely anything left.

Privately, he calls Quynh the answer to his pleas for mercy. She waits by his bedside until he can bear the guilt of living again, and in turn he helps her bear the fear of dying. Their wish is the other’s nightmare. She's optimistic where he's resigned, brash where he's soft. Her personality is addicting and he sees bits of Andy in her: her unmatched ambition and fire, cunning wit, and penchant for mischief. He sees the differences that drew them together: her impulsiveness to act instead of patience, relaxed improvisation instead of strict order. And he realizes how well she must have fit into the team before England. He wonders if the sadness she carries now is new.

The second he meets her he feels like he's known her his whole life. In a way, he has. The dreams stop like they're supposed to but when she's not by his side, she lingers on his mind. The most intimate way to get to know someone is to live and die inside their head for two hundred years.

It thrills him and it terrifies him.

There's a tangle of electronics on the kitchen island: a few laptops, some hard drives. He manages to pick up a few maps at the gas station, marks safe house locations.

After he scrubs Quynh from the CCTV footage she'd tripped on her way to find him, he’ll leave her with some gear, money, a car if he can find one, and instructions on how to contract Copley and the others. She’ll be safer with them. She and Andy will reconcile, her dreams of Nile will stop, and Joe can stop agonizing over his part in convincing their leader to stop searching. She still doesn't know that Andy’s days are numbered now. She still thinks she has time.

She has yet to tell him why she hasn't left yet—aside from what she'd told him when he realized she wasn't a figment of his torment. _I know what it's like to be alone._ He asks her to stay and the guilt keeps him up at night like the dreams used to.

Something crashes in the bathroom—the curtain rod, the mirror—he can’t tell. Reflex and instinct sends his hand to the gun in his back. He spins, checks the door—still locked—the bedroom—still empty. Dread seeps into his blood, cold. What didn't he check, what didn't he remember? _It’s happening again,_ says the voice, blocking his throat. Shrapnel tearing open his gut, Joe choking as he dies— _enough._ “Quynh?”

He closes the distance in two strides, lowering his aim. The door shakes as something slams against the other side.

“Booker?! Open the door!”

The handle jiggles but doesn't give. “Alright, hold on—I need you to unlock the door!”

“Let me out!” Her voice is shrill, almost unrecognizable. Unfiltered terror rips the words into shreds and he tries not to let the sound echo in his head. His hand slips on the knob though he knows that it won't budge anyway. He rams his shoulder against the door jamb, staring at the lock like it'll give. On the other side, she lets out a frustrated cry of panic, a desperate whimper. Her fists slam on the wood—

Water, so heavy that even if he could breathe, the pressure would pop his lungs like grapes. When he sleeps, he drowns. Every night for two hundred years.

He violently shakes her from his head, sweating. “Dammit, Quynh! Stop banging on the fucking—shit, okay, okay, just stand back, alright?”

She screams and it turns into a sob of hysteria halfway. “Booker!”

“I said stand the hell back!” His heel breaks the wood easily, ripping the flimsy handle from the panel. The door swings in freely when he slams it back with his shoulder, ready to kill whatever he possibly could've missed. “Fuck, what the—“

Joe had compared her to a pit viper. Booker would say she's more like lightning.

He's seen Andy use the move thousands of times—used it himself before. Recognizing it helps little in preparing for the feeling of his trachea being dislodged. Years of training stops him from instinctively dropping his gun and reaching for his throat, but he can't stop the stunned half second it grants her. The knife—where the _fuck—_ slides between his ribs and what's left of his breath hitches in an aborted shout.

The same blade on his neck stops any further thought as he instantly backpedals, stumbling into the doorframe, shards of glass under his boots.

She snarls, eyes dark and narrowed into murderous slits, forcing him back onto the hallway wall. Panic adds an insane sharpness to her glare. “You think you're funny? Think you know who you're dealing with, huh?” Her voice gets shrill at the end, devolving into an ancient accent he can't place even if he had his wits about him.

She watches him choke and convulse until his trachea realigns itself and then presses the knife into the side of his pulse until it bleeds steadily.

He holds his hands up, removes his finger from the trigger. Her eyes dart to the side and a hand latches on to his wrist and twists and pinches until it falls and his palm loses feeling. “Easy, _easy!_ What the hell are you talking about?” he growls through clenched teeth. Her eyes darken even more, lending her complexion to that of a trapped animal.

Her nose scrunches and flares and he imagines a cornered lioness baring her teeth. “Immortal or not, I will bleed you dry and leave you at the mercy of a thousand starving wolves—“

“Quynh, I didn't lock you in there!” he snaps. The dagger digs deeper and he hisses, grabbing the wrist that holds it. His blood smears against her bare skin.

She presses closer, feral. “Do you think I’m stupid?!”

“I didn't say that either!” Their lungs battle for what little air is between them. He wrangles his panic and anger in—exhaling through his nose like an agitated fire-breathing dragon. Her eyes narrow, flicking between his for any sliver of deception. Struggling to control his breath with her arm and dagger in his throat, he drops his voice, speaks roughly. “You panicked, you hit the doorknob and it locked on accident, it _happens.”_

Confusion starts to win out over the terror and the pressure lessens a degree. He looks up at the ceiling and closes his eyes for a moment, adrenaline seeping away. “Quynh, why would I lock you in there?”

Her face falls, eyes widening. “I'm going mad.”

He shakes his head, coughing. “No, you're not.”

She pulls back sharply and the knife clatters on the ground. Her hands fist in her hair and she stumbles onto the glass unflinching until he reaches out for her. “Oh my God, Booker.”

He rubs at his throat before stopping, noting the way she freezes in horror. “Hey, hey, don't worry about it.” He folds her into his chest and she stiffens at first. _Hypocrite,_ the voice hisses. He holds her tighter and eventually she reaches up to cling to his shoulders.

“What's wrong with me?” she breathes into his chest, voice thick.

He holds her to him and doesn't let go, hoping she can't hear how hard his heart hammers against his breast. “Nothing. It just happens.”

* * *

It takes a while to calm down from the shower and when she has, she's stiff and numb. The bathroom is more or less trashed so he turns off the water and makes a note to go to the hardware store in the morning.

She's still naked, wet, and covered in blood. He gets a small bucket and a washcloth and puts it under the kitchen faucet. She doesn't react when he runs the cloth over the scarlet skin on her neck, or when he gently pulls glass from her that feet have healed over.

It's when he starts on her hair that she starts crying, silently, motionlessly. Only because the act of hair-debraining has been all but burned into his post-battle regimen, he gently massages shampoo into her scalp and rinses it in the kitchen sink. Suds slip down her skin, suspended by lazy evening sunlight. The air is thick and warm. She closes her eyes when he tips her head to keep the soap out.

It's a quiet, tender process, and outside the sky turns orange, then rose. The tears fall away in favor of a soft, content gaze aimed still at the wall. Sometimes though, it lingers on his face, pensive.

After, she sits cross-legged between his thighs on the bed. She quietly scours Wikipedia after he shows her the basics of navigating, a transparent distraction while he attacks her mane of hair with the only fine-toothed comb he has. If he pulls or pokes too hard, she never says, draped in an old terry cloth towel. She asks for help twice—once when she's overwhelmed by the abundance of information, and again when she needs somewhere to start.

He tells her about growing up and providing for his family during the French Revolution.

“You fought under Napoleon?” she asks after he finishes taming a particularly brutal snarl. The comb glides through the silky black locks that reach far past her shoulder blades. Watching over her shoulder, she lingers on the pictures the most, studies them as if she's committing them to memory.

He hums, remembering the worst parts: peeling off the black tips of his fingers and toes, watching men gorge on the flesh of the dead lest they starve or freeze. A rope around his neck when he decides to be selfish, holding out for three days before realizing that neither the cold nor the noose will kill him. That nothing would. Not for good at least.

It takes him two years to get back home and Amelia calls him the Devil, shows him the notice of his own death.

His first mistake had been telling her the truth.

“Yes.”

Her head cocks and he runs the comb across her scalp. “What was he like?” She fingers the creases on his jeans.

He smiles. “Well, I never met him personally.” She goes silent, looking forward thinking about God-knows what, but each stroke through her hair has her relaxing a tiny bit more so he says nothing. Eventually, the tangles are nothing more than memories—the merciful ones. The ones that are forgotten. He trades the comb for his fingers. She smells like the ocean she hates.

Her breathing slowly gets thicker, though she hides it well. He slides a finger under her chin, turns her face towards him. “Hey.”

“Hey,” she whispers back. It's cruel how her prison has claimed her, how it’s features stain her skin like scars. But her eyes are like sea glass, her skin like foam, the color of sand. Does she know?

He smiles wanly. Fake. “It happens.” _Hypocrite. Hypocrite._

She pulls away, brusque now as if she can hear the voice too. “Not to me.”

The sentence is so infuriatingly _Andy,_ and if Quynh weren't here right now, the reminder would ignite an ache of longing deep in his bones only mended with beer and knives. He wonders which of them got it from the other, has half a mind to ask. “Right, the ancient legendary warrior,” he drawls instead, mocking while she moves to the edge of the mattress. The spot she leaves on the blanket is warm and damp. Softer, “We're still human, you know.”

She fixes him with a look that nearly sends his teeth through his tongue, a jarring exhaustion and wiseness. “You are so young,” she says with a painful half smile and looks away again. “Sometimes, I am afraid I won't be able to breathe. That the next one will be nothing but water.” A tear slips down her cheek.

He leans back on the headboard and scratches his neck. “I am probably the least qualified person to talk to about this,” he chuckles self deprecatingly, looking down. When he looks back up their eyes meet, pine green and bourbon. She waits patiently for him to speak, like whatever he says will be the answer to the universe. For once, he isn't afraid that he may say the wrong thing, or upset someone with his answer. His mouth dries up for a different reason, and he tilts his head, swallows. “I hear it gets easier.”

Her face is somber. “And in your personal experience?”

His gaze snaps back from where it had fallen to. His mouth opens, closes. And opens again. What forms on his tongue is a vague, bullshit, fortune cookie answer—something Nicky would pull out of his ass. What comes out is cracked and hollow and reedy and bleeds a vulnerable honestly he doesn't entirely mean to share.

“I'm still figuring it out.”

Quynh looks away, jaw clenched. He waits, listening to the crickets and doves before she sniffs, wipes away the tears on her face. He doesn't have a chance to move before she's coming back, slotting herself in the curve of his torso. Her face buries in the crook of his shoulder. “I don't want to sleep.”

It's certainly not what he expected her to say. The drowning sun casts a deep magenta hue across the exposed brick and concrete. It makes the air heavy and warm but even landlocked, miles away from any major body of water, Booker smells sand between the pines, salt over hay. The traffic and pedestrians below make their own surf, crashing on the quieter hum of the fan, the ticking of the clock.

“C’mere,” he grunts, tentatively relaxing and her head comes to rest over his heart, steadily rising and falling. “To be honest, me neither,” he admits just for the sake of saying something, tucking a hand behind his head. The other lays across her side. Slowly, the sun sinks farther and farther, leaving behind a legacy of deep blue and white-freckled skies.

They listen to each other breathe, always waiting for the other to catch up.

If Booker forgets something important, he doesn't remember in the morning.


	2. bottles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw: alcohol abuse, briefly mentioned/threatened animal abuse

She can't draw many comparisons considering the lifestyle she and Andromache led before she was flung into the ocean, but Booker is an extremely easy person to live with.

She hates it.

“Stop,” she says one night before Booker can take away the bowl she sets down on the table.

He freezes, eyes darting rapidly across her face, gauging her reaction. Eating agitates her. Swallowing is such an innocent trigger and she hates it. She wants him to argue, to get angry. All he does is look down and nod crookedly.

She watches through narrowed eyes as he walks to the sink, rolls up his sleeves, and turns to face him on the couch. “Why do you do that?”

He pulls his hands back, eyes wide again. His head is always tilted slightly so that he never looks down at her, despite their height difference. He visibly hesitates before he answers. “What do you mean?”

Irritation surges again and she blows air out her nose. “Why do you do the things you do?” She means to be more precise but haste clips her words into daggers

His eyebrows crease. “I don't—“

She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath. “I can take care of myself, Booker.”

He blinks and she wishes he'd stop looking so dejected. Like he deserves the words he's telling himself. “I know that.”

And the sad truth is she knows he knows. But he doesn't have any other way to stop the hurt. He drinks almost every waking moment and she isn't even sure if it affects him or if it's just rote. He puts on a face of composure when he's constantly one bad day away from whatever happens when people like them decide enough is enough.

She doesn't know how to help him because she's drowning too. So when she says, “Good,” she pours herself a glass too.

* * *

Despite his infuriating need to please, Booker is a fellow tortured soul. He's familiar in a way that doesn't burn like the rest of the new world does. Nothing he does reminds her of the cold, of drowning, of Andromache, Lykon. Of the centuries she missed. He exists as he did in her dreams (when they were timeless in the seconds between deaths). A respite.

But although he is not a walking reminder of things she's lost, he bears their scars.

The time between drowning and now is amorphous. The only way to judge the passing of it was after Booker died and the dreaming started. In turn, she got fleeting glimpses; first, of snow. Nothing but numbing cold, paralyzing hunger—a cruel echo of her own eternal suffering. She dreams and suffers with him as he makes his way across what she’ll later find out is now called Russia. Through it all, Booker is terrified and in between both of them dying and reviving, she feels guilt towards her new, unaware companion. But she can't deny the heady relief of being a little less alone than before.

Somewhere down the road, Booker must realize that the dreams run a bit deeper. There is an empathetic nature to their link and it's a current that runs in both directions. Sometimes the feeling of overwhelming guilt disappears and Quynh can only assume that he’s done something that at least momentarily stops the feedback from echoing in the chamber between them.

She'd appreciate it if she didn't hate the silence more.

Her immortality leaves scars on him that she can't anticipate.

Her rescue comes in a deep sea research vessel. Somehow, something has changed over the centuries. For the first time, someone finally seems to hear her.

Whether or not they seem to realize that the iron maiden they stumble across houses a very much alive woman makes no difference to her. She'd like to think so, otherwise she'd feel pretty bad for any other artifacts the vessel might later come across, not too sure they'd survive the violent overturning that hers does.

They lose her in the sand kicked up when the door finally breaks open. She knew from the beginning that she couldn't have been too deep—otherwise she, and the divers that rescue her, would have been crushed, her a great deal while before they'd have even showed up.

She dies twice more before she wakes up for the first time in half a millennia and she's _breathing._

Her rescuers haven’t the slightest idea how to deal with the sobbing, incoherent women they've pulled from a late sixteenth-century iron casket. Frankly, the only reason she doesn't immediately slaughter them is because after several hundred years of dying, she's more than exhausted. Her body is all but desiccated, undead, and the man who she assumes is her captor throws up right next to her when she tries to speak.

She has no voice.

They give her clothes and a blanket that shines like metal. The captain speaks English and even whispering it hurts her ears. He doesn't let them touch her and underneath her panic, her rising hysteria, she thanks the God he’d tortured her for. She needs a plan, an answer. The reflex that jumps into her mind makes her flinch against the metal wall and everyone on the vessel freezes. She barely sees them, tears welling.

_Find Andromache._

The Andromache that never came for her. That never looked for her.

She has no idea how much time has passed, only that the words and phrases the crew used are unfamiliar, as are their clothes, their machinery. Her only guess: a _very_ long time.

* * *

“Do you have _any_ personality?” she snarls one day when he's just too agreeable for her to stand. He stiffens like he did before, almost scared, but his eyes are accusatory, offended instead of apologetic and meek like they normally are. The annoyance must be mutual, then.

“Excuse me?” he grunts, leaning on the back of a dining chair, arms already fortifying a makeshift barrier against her anger.

She cuts a hand through the air. “Do you have an opinion, a preference, an inclination, for _anything?”_

He blows air out of his nose, an audible tell of his unusual impatience and irritation. “What kind of question is that?” he clips shortly, glancing at her out of the narrowed corner of his eye.

The lack of an empathetic response irks her that much more. “You never argue, never ask for anything—“

“I ask for things,” he interrupts, indignant.

“I don't mean asking what I want, or for permission, Book.” She turns, desperate for something to sink her fists into. “It's as if you think your opinion is worthless—that _you're_ worthless.”

“I'm not worthless.”

She stops, looks him right in the eyes. “Don't lie to me. Use me to punish yourself, to torture you during this—this self-exile, but don't you dare lie to me.” Despite how careful she is to keep the tears out of her throat, they bleed through. She doesn't know why the emotions suddenly break, like waves on a beach, only that out of all the things she can take, a lie from Booker isn't one of them.

She's seen much scarier, terrifying things in her long life and while Booker comes no where close to topping that list, she'd be lying if she said he didn't know how to intimidate. His broad frame is usually bear-like and muted, slow. Now, with her anger echoing between them, his thin glare is sharp, piercing. “Don't pretend you know anything about me,” he growls, jaw tight.

It's a weak attempt to push her away, pathetic and she scoffs, “Right, because you're so busy trying to erase and kill yourself even though you _know_ you can't. So you sit here, not bothering to get off your ass and realize that you don't need to keep punishing yourself. Stand up for yourself, your opinion matters—you matter.”

Something lights up in his face—rage, hate, sorrow, she can't tell. And then he laughs and it's a dry, empty sound she immediately hates. He looks down at his boots, crossing his arms. When he looks back up, his hair falls over his eyes. There's a patronizing edge in his words this time. “What do you want me to say?”

“Why do you care what I want? Just say something,” she growls, watching his eyebrow raise in question. And then, maybe just to get a reaction out of his too-calm, too-collected, not-enough-of-a-mess-as-he-should-be _bullshit:_ “It's unhealthy.”

The chair squeaks when he stands, nearly lost beneath the sound of his scoff. He glares at her. “You're not exactly the poster child for healthy coping mechanisms.”

She doesn't understand the phrase but knows enough to understand its implication. She stands to face him but words won't come. He puts on a show of collectedness, of selflessness. There's no way he isn't as restless as she is—not overflowing with unbridled rage, always seconds away from murder. She feels like just existing is tearing her apart from the inside, like she's still down there, silently struggling, begging for someone to see her.

She sneers without thinking, the words coming out before she can anticipate his reaction. “Which bottle did you find that one at the bottom of?” His face flattens, lips thinning. The soft planes of his skin turn into hard lines and creases and its an emotion she can't read.

He sleeps on the couch that night and she discovers a new kind of torture.

* * *

Booker lets the world torment him in ways she simply doesn't understand. He's passive and meek and painfully submissive, all while putting up a facade of gruff indifference, like he couldn't be bothered by the fact that anyone he comes across uses him like a tool to be thrown away—or so she assumes, based on how he acts, anticipates the needs of those around him. His existence revolves around being convenient, unproblematic. Low maintenance.

After five hundred years in a box, the last thing she needs is _low maintenance._

He doesn't talk about why the others aren't with him—or rather why he isn't with the others (she still dreams of the other woman, sees Joe and Nick and Andromache). But she's been alive long enough to know he's trying to punish himself. With drink more often than not. Sometimes she finds strange blood stains on the sleeves of his shirts. They don't scar so she can't tell for sure.

It makes her heart ache. And when it doesn't ache, it makes her furious. Furious that someone would take advantage of his bleeding heart, that he hates himself enough to _let_ someone use him. That he refuses to defend himself, convinced that it's what he deserves.

She's always had a protective streak. It's gotten her in trouble more times than she can count.

He brings back a cat one day. It's a small, weak thing, with folded ears and light-cream markings. He presents it to her in a small box, eyes lit up in a way she's never seen before.

 _That._ That flame he won't let burn, the fire he won't let catch. How do you convince someone to love themselves when they're already resigned to the thought that they're worthless?

“Kill it,” she blurts when he cups it to his chest.

“What?” he blinks. The kitten mewls, eyes hardly opened. His hands dwarf it, could crush it if he only gave it thought. A thought that would have to come from someone else. An demand. A request.

And he'd do it.

“Kill it,” she orders again, voice cold.

Booker’s face blanches, a nervous chuckle rising low in his wide chest. “What are you—“ His eyes flit back and forth between hers, desperate. Then, he freezes, probably realizing that she's serious. “I'm not going to kill the fucking cat, Quynh.”

“I want you to kill the cat,” she says slowly, like he can't understand the words.

“I—“

His hesitation costs him. “Then I’ll do it.” He doesn't move away from her when she takes the kitten, stunned.

It's more fragile when it's in her hands, soft hair, softer bones. Like any small game, the structure of its spine will give without much force. If the aborted move for her arm is any indication, Booker knows exactly that.

“Hey.” An anxious energy makes the air cold and electric. He wipes his hands on his jeans, rubs the back of his neck, rakes a hand through his hair, all nervous tics. “I don't understand—“

“I want to kill this cat,” she repeats.

“Why?” It's a borderline whine, a plea. Inwardly, she begs him to break. Quickly.

She shrugs, looking down again at the helpless animal before moving a hand around its tiny throat. “Wrong answer.”

He hesitates again, hand jerking forward. Only when she feigns the application of pressure does his voice snap to a deep command. “Stop!”

She meets his narrowed eyes, heaving panicking chest. “I want to,” she says evenly, kitten mewling.

Uncertainty flickers in his gaze as he searches hers for disappointment, for reproach. “I don't,” he breaths painfully. “I don't want to.”

She tries to convey in her eyes that it's okay. It's okay to want. “I know. You just needed to say it.”

* * *

For bit, Quynh thinks that she's gone too far, overestimated their bond, drawn too much from the trust they haven't built but slowly, Booker starts asking.

It's little things at first and she forces herself to pull some of the patience Andromache had instilled in her. They're both damaged, wounded animals, and it takes _time._

He fiddles with his watch when he wants to say something. She doesn't know wether he realizes it or not but over time, it becomes a precursor to one soft-spoken opinion or another. “I don't really like that place,” he mutters over a takeout menu one night. “I want the yellow ones,” he says almost timidly when he takes her to a farmer’s market.

In turn, he keeps the nightmares at bay, sits with her through the panic attacks, teaches her about the things she missed. There's still an obsidian guilt deep inside him, when he wakes from a dream with a gun to her head, when she mentions the others, her dreams of the girl he calls Nile. He flinches when she broaches the subject, snaps at her and shuts her out. Their emotions bounce and reflect off each other's, even without the dreams that used to connect them, so she argues back, screams at him. Hurts him.

But he is the only one that understands her pain. And she is the only one that knows the extent of his.

They spar on a particularly rough day. Booker doesn't speak more than a few words all day and when he does she turns on him with a fury she can't direct anywhere else. They find an empty field outside the city and beat each other bloody.

She swings a katana at his neck and only stops when he forgets to block. After that, he can't stop apologizing, like he's done something wrong—like she hasn't been egging him on all day to do the same thing to her.

They get back into the apartment and Booker kicks the door shut before throwing his jacket to the floor, peeling off the bloodied remains of his shirt. The damage has long healed of course, but the blood that remains in its wake is, in a word— _thorough._ She gets her own urge to apologize, trying not to look at the phantom slashes and punctures in his ribs and over his shoulders. He disappears into the bathroom and her stomach twists when the water turns on.

Her throat seizes, muscles locking. She stands there in her soiled clothes, frozen before Booker comes back, leans a hand on the doorframe she'd splintered the last time she'd been on the other side of it. He kicks his boots off, his socks, undoes his belt, throwing it all carelessly on the floor. Then he looks at her, eyes solemn, sad. A corner of his mouth quirks, just for a second and he gestures to her with a tilt of his chin. “C’mon,” he rumbles over the sound of the shower. An innocent sound. Like rain. “I'll help you.”

He's weary in a way she hasn't quite seen before, bone-tired as she hesitates, heart in her throat. She crosses the threshold, onto the soft green bath mat. He motions toward her, “Off.”

She can't help it, she hesitates again. Shame left her centuries ago, and there's hardly any propriety left between them, but for some reason, she stops _this_ time. He notices, mouth opening silently. “Are you okay?” she blurts out.

She's never asked before. Always knew the answer. But Booker needs an out, and she needs him to be okay. She can't say why.

His fingers are shaking like his voice won't when he mouths, “No.”

In the morning, he’ll be back to normal, as if nothing ever happened. He'll gather their clothes, take them somewhere to burn, and they'll be at each other’s throats again. For now, he lets himself be vulnerable. His shoulders block the worst of the scalding spray and she stands in his shadow. He goes through the routine of washing her hair and she watches the water turn pink, then clear between their toes. She keeps a hand around his elbow while he moves, keeping herself grounded, solid so she doesn't fall apart and swirl down the drain.

Even while he's letting himself be vulnerable he's protecting her. Maybe he can't stop. Maybe he's convinced himself that he doesn't deserve an opinion, doesn't deserve to speak up. It makes her heart ache, watching the swaying exhaustion in his movements—as if he's afraid to be selfish.

Something clicks and her heart breaks.

Booker moves to turn off the water and her grabs his hand, beckons for the shampoo. He makes a soft disgruntled noise but, as always, obeys without a word. She pulls him a little farther out of the spray and reaches up to his own mop of hair. “Quynh—“ he starts objecting.

He has to lean down for her to reach comfortably so when she glares at him their eyes are level. “Do you want me to wash your hair?”

Reflexively, he starts to answer and she watches his jaw clamp down on the word. Something swims in his eyes and she waits for him to muster up the courage. Then, almost brokenly, “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” The fight leaves him abruptly, his forehead falling to her shoulder. “Can you. please?”

She tries to mimic the firm gentleness he'd showed her, massaging the soap into his scalp, rubbing the more stubborn stains of blood from his skin.

“It's okay to be selfish,” she says softly.

His breath is hot on her collar, voice light, pained. “The last time I was selfish I hurt the people I love.”

It's the most straightforward answer he's given her as to why he's alone. “Whatever you did, they'll forgive you.”

He shakes his head. “They won’t.”

She pauses, stroking a hand down his neck and shoulders. “It's okay to let yourself want things, to give yourself a break. It doesn't have to be forgiveness to be kind.”

He says nothing, huddled close around her.

“Do you want to talk about it?” she asks, returning to work the shampoo down the nape of his neck, scraping her fingers against the knots of stress.

He shivers, hands light on her hips, polite, timid. “Can—“ he tries, throat dry. “Can I say no?”

She leans back so she can flip his hair away from his face, wipe the suds from his temples with the same tenderness he'd shown her. “Of course you can.”


	3. circumstances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw: panic attacks, implied/mentioned eating disorder

Quynh is not an easy person to live with, however, after all that she's been through, Booker can't exactly say he expected anything different.

Her anger is unpredictable and explosive. When Amelia was pregnant with their firstborn, she was similar: volatile, emotional. And similar still when he'd come home after she'd already come to terms with his death almost two years prior. But his beloved wasn't several millennia old, a trained assassin, nor did she have a paralyzing (and justified) fear of dying.

She doesn't sleep. Not really. When she does, it's always an accident, and it's always interrupted by an outburst of terror and unadulterated panic that takes the better part of an hour to fully deescalate.

The power goes out during a particularly brutal thunderstorm and the lamp that always stays on suddenly plunges them into darkness. If her terrified shriek didn't wake him, then it would've been the admittedly unsettling crackle of close thunder. Like usual, his hand goes immediately under his pillow before he remembers it's for this exact reason he moved it instead under the mattress.

Luckily, the storm had him on edge as well. Sudden noises and the like, none of the immortals are particularly fond of them and he wakes up pretty easily. Unluckily, for that exact same reason, he wakes up fight-ready. He grabs the hand she has outstretched to him around the wrist so tight the keen in her voice rises an octave, the other pushing back at his shoulder. _”Booker, stop,”_ she cries brokenly enough that he drops her, skin burning his palm.

Another clap of thunder rolls around the building and her whole body flinches, curled up against the headboard, arms over her head. This time when he grabs at her it's to pull her flush to his chest “Shh, I'm sorry,” he murmurs, his own heart pounding, ears ringing. “I'm sorry.”

It's a weekly occurrence—twice, if not three times. Worse when she refuses to eat. So she spends more of the days and nights cranky and weak from dehydration and insomnia. The only time it seems she can doze at least somewhat fitfully, is during the height of the day when the town is awake and bustle of the townsfolk filter through the windows. Even then, it's only truly productive when she's slack against his chest in his lap, more often than not while he's passing the time reading or maintaining their small arsenal of weapons.

What grounds her the most never fails to be physical contact. She’ll flinch or wince before she relaxes, and then melt into post-panic delirium. He's seen PTSD before, seen the world through his own thousand-yard-stare, but Quynh’s case proves to be understandably severe.

She lays against him, tracing a fingertip along the healing tear she'd gouged into his bicep in confusion. Her guilt isn't buried as deep as his own and it catches in the shallows of her dry throat and bloodshot eyes.

He scrapes a slow hand down between her shoulders and back up in time with their breathing. “You can't live like this,” he hums.

She scoffs very faintly, sleepy in the afternoon heat that doesn't seem to bother her. “You're a hypocrite.”

“I thought we'd already established that,” he volleys playfully, voice raising a step with humor before mellowing again. Even like this, her entire body thrums with anxiety, like a taut rubber band. “You can't hold out forever.”

“I have done it before,” she breathes, teetering on the edge of the hazy unconsciousness she keeps returning to.

He presses his cheek to the side of her head, drowning out the voice with the sound of cicadas and the fan. _Hypocrite._

* * *

She prefers analog clocks to the digital ones lying around. The one on the wall in the kitchen she drags a chair over to reach. She sits cross legged on the couch with it in her lap, a palm splayed across the face.

She won't eat anything cold, or wet. Water has to be on the warm side of room temperature—if she ever drinks it in the first place. Soups and the like aren't even touched. She's not very sensitive to salt but the taste of it makes her violently sick anyways. When she does eat, it's usually quick, ravenous, and comes back up within the hour—be it involuntarily or, more often, induced.

There's a tomato plant on the balcony, a few other herbs he hasn't gone through the trouble of identifying. She asks for a tape measure and records the length of each stem every day.

She picks them when they start weighing down the stalk, firm and red. He suggests making pizza, knowing she won't eat it. She agrees anyway.

When they play off each other so often, it's hard to pinpoint who’s helping who at any given moment. They pick up ingredients from the farmers market and she elbows him when he takes too long to make a decision. He tries to pick what he thinks she likes but it's stressful enough in the end that it doesn't matter. Thankfully, it's just the toppings she makes him pick, and even then he only picks two.

She has the idea to hunt for a local recipe and after asking around they're pointed to a hardy old woman who sells strawberries and cheese. Her Occitan catches him off guard and she beams and coos when he responds in kind. Quynh watches the exchange, head tipping at the shift in dialect and the woman fawns over her, showering her with flowery compliments and suggestive praise only one of them understands. She becomes particularly interested when Booker turns red, curious enough for her to ask him to translate. Instead, he coughs, ears hot. “She wants to know what the ingredients are for.”

She responds for him with the universally understood, “Pizza!” that elicits another round of adoring flattery. She scribbles a short recipe on an envelope, telling him how much they remind her of she and her late husband. His neck continues to burn, especially when Quynh’s attention wanders from the conversation to the bouquet of lavender on the table, her hand subconsciously latches onto his arm.

They walk away with a pail of strawberries, mozzarella, a few sprigs of lavender, and Siobhan’s husbands favorite margherita pizza recipe. Quynh asks suspiciously, hands now intertwined, “What were you two talking for so long about?” She brings the flowers to her face.

He smiles at her, finding a bit of dread in how easy it comes. “She just really loves pizza.”

And he finds himself back at the same question he always does in moments of silence: why him? Why seek him out after all those years, the only one of them besides Nile that she hadn't met? She couldn't have known his intentions, if he was trustworthy or not. She knew nothing about him, but for some reason, he was her first choice.

There's something dangerously soft about the way that makes him feel.

He used to look on at Nicky and Joe with an envy so rotten and hateful. His feelings toward Andy had been born of admiration, idolization, but he can't help wondering if it was more a matter of _convenience._ Would she still choose to sit next to him, to trust him if there was someone else? Or was she only looking to him because the other two were so absorbed in each other? Was it all circumstance?

Each of them know each other in ways no one else could, it's what makes them a unit, cohesive. He can anticipate Andy’s actions in a firefight, pinpoint the exact moment Joe will choose to trip a target for him to finish off, can strike a man down and know in his bones that Nicky will supply a full mag into his waiting hand. It's what makes them the best.

But when you're fighting and dying and dying and fighting the lines get blurry. Having something to fight for and something to die for are not the same thing. Andy knew this. Nicky knew this. Joe knew this. All Booker knew was that there was nothing worth living for, but plenty worth dying for.

The most important of those things was Andy—the sly smile she'd forget to hide when one of the made a particularly stupid joke, the sound of her voice calling them out of a nightmare, out of the dark where she couldn't follow. Nothing else mattered. Everything he felt for her—everything he stills feels more violently than any death, more vividly than any love—circumstance doesn't feel like that.

But he would have been able to tell if he was her reason the way she was his.

So why does Quynh stay? Why does she honor her promise? They owe each other nothing, she hasn't seen her family in centuries but she stays when he asks. He watches her breathe, thinking, and then, like a bolt of lightning: the same reason he stays.

No matter how strongly they feel, no matter how hard it is, they're better off without them.

So then it must be circumstance.

* * *

She falls too far and he can't wake her up.

They fight that day, both push buttons they shouldn't have. She calls him an overbearing coward with no purpose except for making people feel better about themselves. He calls her a hopeless ghost trying to fit into a world that has no place for her anymore.

It's fog and mirrors, empty words from broken hearts shattered one too many times by an indifferent universe. He curses himself until he passes out drunk on the couch, Cosette keeping him warm in her absence.

He wakes when the kitten stands up on his chest, jumping down, a pale shadow in the moonlight. She pads to the bedroom door and looks back at him. He considers ignoring her—he's still hurt and angry, would rather not deal or take more damage until he's at least somewhat inebriated again. He's just closed his eyes, arms crossed and head turned into the cushions, when Quynh makes a stifled noise behind the door.

His anger will blind his memory to the fact that he doesn't think twice before he's running across the room, pushing the door open.

She's dreaming.

“I'm here.” He climbs beside her while she twitches and whimpers, face contorted in terror, eyes blown open. He leans over her, brushing the back of his knuckles across her cheek: wet. Cosette makes a tiny noise before joining them, leaning down to sniff Quynh’s face. She makes a keening sound in her throat and he quickly shoos the cat to the side. “It's just sleep paralysis, it's okay, I've got you.” Tremors rip through her body and he hugs her to him, face in her neck. “You're okay. You're okay. It'll pass.”

Sure enough, eventually her muscles relax, jaw softening enough that she openly sobs—not a stifled thing like before but heart-wrenching. What he imagines surrender sounds like. She moves robotically, feeling seeping like honey back into her bones when she pushes herself to her shoulder to turn over and cling to him. Her arms fold around his neck, clutching at his shoulders. She hiccups brokenly, “I'm sorry—I'm sorry, Booker—“

“It's okay.”

She hooks her chin over his shoulder, trembling. “Every time I close my eyes I'm back there,” she whispers, horrified.

He tightens his hold, cursing himself again. “I've got you.”

“It always feels like this, I can't make it stop.”

“Tell me what to do.”

She doesn't answer.

* * *

Booker isn't the kind of person people need.

He sticks around when it's useful, hopes they keep him close so it's convenient later and he's okay with that. The problem happens when he gets too attached. That's what happened with the Guard.

At the beginning, he wanted nothing to do with any of them. Andy hadn't given him much of a choice once the last of his family was dead. If he was a stronger man, maybe he would've protested more, put up a fight. But strong just wasn't a word people used to describe him.

He needed something to live for and she knew it. They all did. Andy probably didn't intend to become that thing, but she did and he needed her all the more for it. It was a one-sided dependency, parasitic. And perhaps that's his greatest guilt: _needing_ something to exist. He can say with total confidence that everyone in his life would have been better off without him. He's a leech.

This is his thought process as he tries to figure out how to stop the nightmares. Stop the night terrors, the panic attacks—anything. There's a helpless resignation in her voice when she tells him she doesn't know how he can help, as if she doesn't expect anything to come from it. And it isn't disappointment, or anger and somehow that's just as bad. He doesn't know what she wants and she doesn't give him a clue. The nightmares keep coming and he wakes up every time.

She tags along to a safehouse he needs to check up on. It's far away enough that he’ll be a few days so when he tells her she immediately insists on coming. It's another church, like the one outside of Paris, but this one is almost completely crumbled. He has to hack away branches and roots to find the cellar door.

He was here recently enough that the bulk of the supplies isn't outdated as much as it's just spoiled. There's a stash of some of the more modern gear—thermal blankets, MREs, batteries, automatic weapons and the like.

The door gives with a hard tug, dirt and wood that had wormed into the cracks chipping away into brittle and flakes. Old, damp air rushes out, the smell of dirt and dead leaves somewhat pleasant and familiar. He drags the chests out into the light one by one, brushes off the rocks and roots that have reclaimed it. A few meters away, Quynh sits in the driver’s seat, door open, leaning into the chair with heavy eyelids. She watches, not because she's interested, but for some other reason he can't pinpoint.

The crates are lined with expired rations. He throws them into a pile, packs the new ones. Blankets, spare clothes—he adds an extra pair this time for Nile. He checks the computers, cracks them open in the car to update their software. It's rote work, menial and dull but it feels like what normal used to feel like and if he stops thinking about it so hard, he can almost fool his heart into thinking that the Guard will be waiting for him at the apartment when they return. Almost.

Quynh tracks each motion he makes from the car to the cache, especially when he brings out the arsenal that had been stashed in the back. She reaches for a bow that's far too old to be of any use anymore. The wood likely used to be soft and molded, now cracked, brittle. The drawstring is gone by now, but she holds her fingers in its place like it isn't. “We can get you a new one, if you want,” he offers. She turns it over and hums.

Something urges him to touch her, ground her. He bites in back and tries to steal her gaze instead, tilting his head into her field of view. “You tired?”

She sets the bow back down, folding her arms in front of her. “No.” Again, she blinks sluggishly, a tired frustration in her eyes.

The rest of the neglected weapons come out. They're outdated, impractical by now, even if he chose to restore them. He divides them into ones that will be destroyed and ones that can be salvaged.

She watches with distant intrigue, like she simply doesn't have the energy to engage in something that used to make her happy. It distracts him and he spends a lot of the time watching her gaze blankly at whatever is in his hands, never noticing what he's actually doing. Every now and then, her eyes will drift closed—never for more than a few moments at a time.

What would Andy do, he thinks. Barring the fact that Quynh is her lost love of five-hundred years and counting, Andy would probably throw back a shot and put a gun in her hand, drop her in a room of bad guys and watch the magic happen. Or at least, that's what she did with Booker. But that wasn't Andy’s fault. Booker wasn't her responsibility, just some unlucky deserter on the verge of spilling trade secrets. Andy just doesn't do _feelings_ unless they're anger and disappointment.

He knows there's better ways but he has to admit, he's gotten comfortable following that lead.

But things are very, very different now.

He sits on the crumbling stone of what used to be a wall, pats the space next to him and motions to her. “C’mon. C’mere.” It takes coaxing but eventually she smiles tiredly, gathering the blanket around her and making her way over. She hops onto the rock, thigh touching his and for a split second the summer afternoon goes frigid. “Give me your hand,” he says and she does.

Her hand is cold when he fold’s their fingers together, keeping hold when he brings his other hand up to unclip his watch. “What are you doing?” she smiles. He shows her the face she's seen a hundred times before.

“What's that?”

She starts to pull away but he hums. “It's alright,” he says, turning her wrist over to fasten it. “It's to help you sleep.” He slides the face around so it rests on the inside of her arm, against her pulse.

Her skin is overly sensitive, he knows that, so when she twitches against the shiver the ticking sends up her spine, he's there to hold his hand against it, steadying her.

“Booker—“ She peers down at the face and its sporty layout. The base is black, accented with blue hands and dials. It had been a gift from Joe, something he'd snagged on one sabbatical or another.

“Here,” he reaches out to fiddle with a few buttons and holds her still when the resulting vibration makes her tense. “Easy. Joe gave it to me to use on jobs. The alarm goes off silently. To snooze it—“ he presses the face until it sinks. “Every fifteen. It's something you didn't have down there.”

Something changes in her face so abruptly his sheepish smile falls and his fingers freeze. Did he say something wrong? Overstep?

She looks at him, eyes dark and somber. “Thank you, Booker.”

Relief, all the way to his toes. “It's nothing.”

Her head tilts and the sun catches sadness in the embers. “I don't just mean for the watch.”

He looks down at their hands and she waits for him to gather the courage to answer. Nothing seems okay to say with without running the risk of implying she can't help herself, or that she's weak. He can't say that he did it for himself, so that she wouldn't leave him—it isn't the whole truth. But the whole truth isn't that he did it purely for her.

(Some of the truth is that he wishes someone could've done the same for him.)

The truth is that she is all he has.

(And he wishes someone would have stopped him.)

And more importantly, _he_ is all _she_ has.

No one else will help her stand back up or chase away the demons when she's too tired. No one else will have her back. No one will care.

_Circumstance._

“I'm sorry.”

She rolls her eyes, smiling. “I give you my gratitude and you apologize.”

His face burns and he rubs a palm over his jeans. “I'm sorry it's me your stuck with.”

Her mouth opens and then closes. For a moment, he thinks she’ll finally answer: did she choose? Was is just chance? _Why did she stay?_

She snorts. “I've been stuck before. This isn't that.”

He blurts out before he can stop himself, “If you have no where else to go, are you not stuck?”

Her head falls and butts against his shoulder, thumb sweeping the back of his palm. For the first time in days she laughs, and even gritty and dry with exhaustion it's very nearly the happiest sound he's ever heard.

She doesn't tell him that he's wrong—that she can go anywhere she wants. He knows that. She doesn't tell him she can leave whenever she pleases. He knows that too. In fact, she says nothing at all, still laughing into his shirt.

He packs up the cache, stacks the stones over the door, lays the roots and vines back to where he'd peeled them from. On the drive to the hotel, she finally tells him what was so funny.

And there's no time to analyze the statement, the meaning of it and the sound of the words—or even if he heard her correctly—because by the time he looks over to where she holds his hand in her lap, she's asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apologies for taking my time! school started up again and i am h e l l a busy. the idea for this chapter stemmed from the fun idea of losing one’s sense of passing time. 
> 
> also if you didn’t catch it, the cats name is cosette


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